4 Ups And 6 Downs From WWE Backlash 2017

1. WWE Champion Jinder Mahal

Jinder Mahal
WWE.com

Brock Lesnar, Dean Ambrose, Kevin Owens, Jinder Mahal. One of these things is not like the others. Those are the top singles champs on Raw and SmackDown. Only one of them has a loss to El Torito on their résumé.

Yep, WWE went and put their prestigious world title on a guy who lost 85% of his televised matches last year and only started winning this year the moment he became #1 contender. He jobbed to Rob Gronkowski and lost his debut SmackDown match to Mojo Rawley in three minutes.

None of this is said to demean Jinder as a person or even as a wrestler. However, as several sites have noted, Mahal suddenly rose to prominence with two things happening: WWE trying to expand into India, and Jinder’s new physique. It’s not like he has been putting together better matches and drawing more heat from crowds. Had any of that been happening and his sudden rise didn’t come out of the blue, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal at all.

Looking at the list of former title-holders, Mahal might be the second-least-likely and unspectacular champ, ahead only of Vince McMahon. Of course, he can always prove us all wrong.

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Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.